Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
Do it. I watched seasons 1-5 over the course of 2-3 weeks. It's the best thing.
Seasons 6 on...were not planned in advance because the show was expected to end with 5, and I've only seen the first episode of 6. Doesn't seem bad, but a distinct step down.
Don't let that stop you, though, because the show is awesome.
I'll start it after I finish Sherlock, then.
As if I didn't already have enough to do.
yes
Watch out for insane incest slashfic fanatics if you for whatever reason try looking around for stuff related to it on the Internet, though. And don't believe that anything that show says about any given religion is how it actually is in reality.
Do these things and you should be just fine.
That... should kind of be a given, given the show.
I'm not often in agreement with Jim Sterling, but his defense of Alien 3 is really good. I don't think it's the best of the series as he claims, but I do think it's a worthy successor to the previous films, albeit one that alienated (hur) those who most significantly appreciated the second film.
Man, Cloud Atlas came out today here, and Life of Pi comes out next week. whycantiholdallthesemovies.png
Also, The Hobbit was better than expected.
I started watching Community today. It's pretty good.
I really need to watch Community through properly. What I've seen is great.
So, Cloud Atlas was very, very good. Though It's a bit... heavy handed? I don't know if I should call it heavy handed or direct. But anyway, if you haven't, go watch it.
So I just watched In Time.
I liked it quite a bit, though in the 'Shonen' sense. I understand that they need some kind of limit on overpopulation since everybody can live forever now and it's much easier to convince people to put limits on their lives in exchange for the promise for living together instead of convincing them to like... stop having children, but I feel like it would make more sense if time weren't the only currency since well... from the first moment when 4 minutes was used as currency for a terrible cup of coffee my mind wouldn't let the seeming hyperinflation go (Oh, plus the entire currency being worth a liiiiittle too much, but that's getting into the macroeconomics the writers clearly didn't think about). I thought the rich guys were cheating with the inflation... but no, when we get to Sector 1 (Why is it so easy to get in there anyway? That thing should be scanning both the amount of money and who exactly has it, then again the timekeepers have the most inefficient system ever anyways.) it's even worse.
The thing that really stuck out to me is you can take people's time without their consent. Really? This is murderous! What type of crazy people agreed to this? And the rich father couldn't spend some of that time he has to get his daughter some sort of protective measure? This was really dumb.
Moving away from the universe, the characters were surprisingly black and white for a movie with such a unique concept and as a result most of that potential is wasted. I mean, till the end every person who opposes Will is obviously evil. Nobody changes (In fact, the one character you expect to change just times out), nobody has reasons for how evil they are, they just... are. It's boring.
This brings me to the Minute Men as a whole. They're not characters, they're forces of plot. They might as well have long black twirling mustaches to go with how heartless they are. They never even get motivations before they die. They could've been replaced with rogue robots that stole time and I would've felt more attached to them.
Well, there were a lot of other silly things I could go off on but I did really like sitting through it despite the pacing being really disjointed (I felt like it should've been a 5 episode OVA series, or whatever the equivalent is in America).
Finally, Amanda Seyfried, looking and speaking like a clone of Kana Hanazawa is totally endearing. But you're also an actress, so emote once in a while.
I don't think Amanda Seyfried will ever emote as well as she did in Mean Girls. And even then she had a distant glazed look.
I don't think Amanda Seyfried will ever be cast as anything other than eyecandy. But she performs that role admirably.
I honestly do not find her attractive. The blonde hair, the big eyes, pale skin and full round cheeks just do something...
Well, it's understandable, a lot of people are put off by the gap between her eyes. As they (the girls from Mean Girls) are today, I'd rank them: Rachel McAdams >> Amanda Seyfried >>>> Lacey Chabert >>>>>>> Lindsay Lohan.
Moving on, I just went to see Life of Pi. It's an absolutely gorgeous movie, and for the first time, I'd say the 3D somewhat contributes to this. The story is nice and the acting is good (I have to find out if the tiger is real, animatronic or CG), though it has little dialogue (sorry Saturn & Juan). I enjoyed it a lot (though I was a bit depressed at the time, so I guess that contributed to it), and I definitely recommend it.
Wait a se-
Oh. Carry on.
^ It's okay. Life of Pi is one of the few movies where I would say the script is not one of the huge pluses that makes it great.
???
You both are screenwriting people, rather than cinematography people... though, actually, I think (in my absolute ignorance) that minimalist dialogue probably takes more skill than the Whedon/Sorkin super fast and witty style.
Well, that and, you know, the movie was written by a screenwriter (An Academy Award nominated one at that, even)
I wouldn't say it's a matter of more/less skill so much as different skills, albeit one more essential than the other (After all, even Whedonshit is very visually based in its storytelling.)
Elaborate.
Well, telling stories based on actions/imagery in a format that doesn't allow for a fluid and florid prose seems to be the harder thing, granted, but dialogue also requires a lot of skill in a format where you're supposed to tell your story mostly through action and imagery rather than people talking about it. Knowing when to do which is also probably the most essential skill of all. If you have too much dialogue, then your movie becomes telling and not showing, but if you have too much action or imagery, your movie starts to seem mindless or impenetrable, depending on the circumnstances
Some directors and writers' (Linklater, Tarantino, the aforementioned Sorkin and Whedon) ouvre are obviously anathema to this whole concept, but you'll find that most of these people are from a dark time called the 90s. And more importantly, most of these writers are one of three: Either they are self-taught, have more of a focus on directing than writing their movies and/or have a theater background (In Sorkin's case) and mind you, there's nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, there's no real and steadfast rule to write a blockbuster or very succesful TV show, but just a lot of guidelines and principles that most succesful projects seem to follow.
Hm, true enough.
By the way, given that it's been brought up, how about those Academy Awards Nominations (I know, >Oscars >not being a circlejerk of old white men, but hey)?
I've actually yet to see almost all the movies in the Best Picture category (most of them weren't released here yet)... I heard great things about Amour and Beasts of The Southern Wild (though I've seen the latter be callled manipulative and insincere), generally good things about Argo and Django (They're certainly not the kind of movie that would usually earn a nomination, but that can only be a good thing) and mixed things about Lincoln and Les Miserables (but then again, their subject matters are the Award Ceremony equivalent of "instantreplies.jpg", and the former has also two huge names attached to it). It seems like Zero Dark Thirty is good too, but I can't help but dislike it on principle (Obviously manipulative subject, released at the end of the year to maximize the hype, you know the type); on a similar note I have to like Silver Linings Playbook on principle as well, on the grounds of it being a comedy.
I will probably end up watching all, or at least most, of these eventually. Notably absent from the list are The Master and maaaaaybe Cloud Atlas (I'll see how it holds up to the others when I watch them).
The Master not being nominated pretty much told me right away that I wasn't really gonna pay attention to these year's Oscars.
I feel Cloud Atlas is kinda meh, myself, but I'm apparently alone on that one.
If nothing else, Beasts of the Southern Wild being nominated is a triumph for indie film (And I prefer that being nominated to Cloud Atlas, all truths being laid on the table)
Haven't seen Amour, but Haneke is good so I'll have to give it a shot.
Django being nominated is sort of weird in terms of its actual content, but I suspect that if Tarantino was not involved, it wouldn't be nominated, which is all kinds of irritating.
Lincoln and Les Miserables are movies I'm definitely not gonna watch until they come out in DVD and am able to weigh them in any other level than oscar-chasing art.
Silver Linings Playbook looks like good stuff but I'm just iffy on the whole mental illness aspect of it all. It seems to just be saying the same things Hollywood says about mentally ill people all the time.
Zero Dark Thirty is a movie I'm not fond of by concept, but I'm willing to give Bigelow the benefit of the doubt if only because The Hurt Locker was actually an alright movie that gets a horrible bad rep for being an oscar winner in a rather shitty year for film.
Oh, also, Whedon not being nominated for Best Director and/or Best Adapted Screenplay and the Avengers not being nominated for Best Editing is a crime of the highest order.
(Yes, I know the Oscars would never do such things. But then again, since when did the Oscars reward merit and not upholding storytelling and social ideals from the early 20th century)
Re Zero Dark Thirty haven't seen it because it does seem kinda iffy subject wise. One thing that irks me is how the movie touched off a debate on torture and folks are getting mad at the film makers for not weighing in on the debate they kicked off. Which to me doesn't seem like the sort of thing a film maker should be expected to do. If they want to let their work speak for itself, that's their choice.
Re Cloud Atlas - it's a very pretty and well put together movie, but it basically misses the points it was trying to make about race in execution.
Noimporta - Beasts of the Sothern Wild is called manipulative and insincere? How come? Just curious, I haven't seen it myself.
It has been called that by Chris-chan's brother.
And probably other people, but they aren't important.
I am unsure if you know what important means, mon
In other news, besides Alkthash's doomsaying, I saw Killer Joe. Matthew Mcconaughey plays against type and turns in an insanely creepy performance. The movie is about what you'd expect from hearing about petty criminal hicks hiring a hitman.